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Yes, it’s a 500-horsepower Volvo S60. Yes, it’s fast — very fast indeed. Polestar, the company that built it, is estimating 0-60 mph in less than 4.0 seconds. (If they said 3.5 seconds, we would believe them.) It is also very expensive. Neither Polestar nor Volvo will say just how expensive, but let’s assume north of $200,000. Now that all the forum-racers have their numbers, the rest of us can actually talk about the car.

Polestar is the stand-alone reincarnation of Volvo‘s racing effort from the 1990s. After a decade of racing touring cars, Volvo corporate began to lose interest in the daily operation and expense of building racing cars and engines, but the people involved in the effort didn’t. So the battle continues under a different flag, but still with a large amount of factory support.

Polestar’s first entry in the concept car business was an extreme C30 cranking out 400 hp with all-wheel drive. It caused quite a stir in the Volvo community, and generated a flood of requests to the home office. Sadly, the writing was already on the wall for the demise of the C30, and the project didn’t go much farther than generating interest. It wasn’t a complete loss, though, because all that interest turned into motivation for the S60 project you see here.

Since this S60 is based on Volvo’s bread-and-butter sedan, it’s more likely to live on as more than just a one-off. Like the concept C30, the S60 is a reflection of Polestar’s current racing program. A few years ago, Polestar was racing in the Scandinavian and World Touring Car Championship with a C30. It is now attacking the brand-new TTA Series in Sweden with an S60. Unlike the aluminum tub, mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive TTA cars, this concept is based on the factory unibody and drivetrain.

The basic concept of the Volvo S60 is there, but you get the feeling there aren’t many parts of this car that haven’t received attention. On the outside, both front and rear fenders are flared, allowing the front track to be increased by 20mm and the rear by 40mm. The front fenders are molded in carbon fiber, as are both bumpers. The rear fenders are steel, just like the factory parts. Polestar added a rear diffuser and larger rear and deeper front spoilers, and the entire aero-package was tested in Volvo’s wind tunnel, meaning the modifications are more than just aesthetic.

Sitting in the cockpit, you immediately notice the seats, shifter, and center console. The seats are based on the comfortable — but not necessarily sporty — stock seats. The bolsters have swollen to hip- and shoulder-hugging dimensions, while the leather hides have been swapped for micro-suede, the same material used on the shifter and steering wheel. To better accommodate all the track-day gear-rowing, the center console has been shaved down and simplified to keep it out of the way of elbows and forearms.

Getting underway is a bit more challenging than in most current cars. The clutch action is heavy and gives less information than I am accustomed to. The car chugs and lurches a bit from the trackside, but I narrowly avoid the dreaded stall. Did I mention I have the added pressure of Robert Dahlgren — Polestar’s touring car ace wheelman — sitting shotgun? He chuckles as the assembled Polestar team wonder whom they handed the keys to. But in a ridealong with Robert later in the day, he went through the same juttering start.

The need to get some heat in the equipment is the perfect excuse for a few slow laps to get a feel for the car and Volvo’s test track. The engine feels strong, even at part throttle. The size of the turbo is immediately apparent as the first few thousand RPM are clearly spinning around without the aid of boost. The personality is totally different from a standard S60 T6, as you’d expect from almost 70 percent more power. All that extra power didn’t come easy, either. The block of the 3.0-liter I-6 remains unchanged, but most of the other mechanical bits have either been replaced or modified for a harder life under pressure. The pistons and rods are new, while the crankshaft is a re-machined stock piece. The head has been modified for higher flow and the combustion chambers have been reshaped. The entire intake system is new, with intake runners and a plenum that look as though they were pulled straight from the race car.

During a conversation with a powertrain engineer, the nuances of intake tuning were discussed in great, almost agonizing detail. I will only bore you with the main points. In naturally aspirated engines, runner length and plenum volume are integral in power generation. Resonance tuning — managing the flow of air into the engine with runner length and volume — allows engineers to optimize air flow. Get it just right, and it is possible to get greater than 100 percent volumetric efficiency; get it wrong, and you’re throwing away power. On a forced induction engine, the air is being crammed into the cylinders under boost, so the resonance effect is far less important, but keeping air velocity high in a smaller plenum must be balanced with enough volume to feed the engine at high rpm. That’s your science lesson for the day.

Power delivery comes in waves. Between 2800 and 3000 rpm, the turbo starts to wake up and power begins to build. It doesn’t hit like a hammer, but it becomes clear the switch has been flipped. By 4200 rpm the Garrett turbo has found its stride, and a surge of power comes on quick. The S60 pulls hard down the short front straight. The tires bite and although it is all-wheel-drive, there is a barely perceptible amount of torque steer. It is almost like grooves in the pavement pulling the track slightly. Polestar could sort this out by replacing the open differential in front with a limited slip, or even changing the front suspension geometry, but either of these steps would ruin the nearly telepathic steering.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that steering and the wider view of handling are what this car is all about. Polestar was built on touring car racing, after all. It even started the project from a race car builder perspective rather than your average tuner. First, the S60 body was strengthened at the front and rear with chassis bracing. Once the body was properly stiffened, the process kept moving from the inside out. The front and rear subframes were mounted on higher durometer bushings to rid them of any geometry changes under load. Next, the control arms were modified and soft rubber bushings were replaced either with harder units or steel mono-balls. The effect is completely linear and instantly reactive steering. The smallest movements of the steering wheel are immediately telegraphed to the road. Turn-in is quick but not darty; it’s precise and surgical. This is exactly how all cars should react.

Most people will probably be surprised at the suspension movement’s compliance. Spring and damping rates are downright soft compared to most tuner cars. While the ride height has been lowered more than an inch, the car never runs out of travel. It soaks up bumps; it rolls, dives, and squats. But more important, it keeps the big 265/30/19 Michelins pressed firmly to the ground. Even with all the weight transfer, it remains neutral. The Haldex all-wheel drive and rear E-LSD push the power around effortlessly. In lower speed corners, an aggressive throttle foot gets the rear end to rotate around. The S60 will never be a drift car, but it feels closer to rear-wheel drive than front. In high speed sweepers the car tends to understeer on throttle while the nose tucks in with a bit of a lift.

Volvo’s test track is less than ideal for showing off cars. Turns are off-camber. Some are increasing radius, others are worse yet, with uphill entries and downhill exits. If they wanted to make the car feel better than it is, they picked the wrong place. Still, the Polestar S60 shines. It doesn’t need banked turns and uphill exits to impress. It still feels hefty over the front wheels, as it is a transversely mounted engine and transaxle (you can’t get away from that), but those big tires and stiff front end attack apexes like the business end of a great white going after a fast-moving lunch. I quickly found myself getting too confident in the car and suddenly remembered this one-off actually belongs to a very lucky customer. Not wanting to wad up another person’s car, I dialed back the aggression well below the car’s, or more likely, my, limits.

Even driven at mere canyon-carving speeds, everything works perfectly. The shifter action is short and very mechanical. It snicks from gear to gear so precisely, it makes you forget that a dual-clutch would be more efficient. The brake pedal is firm and transmits exactly what the big six-piston calipers are doing. While this car clearly has the performance chops to hang with any of the super sedans on the market today, it is just as much about driving enjoyment as it is the numbers. Even the sound is amazing.

You might expect the I-6 to sound similar to a BMW, but in reality, it’s closer to a 911. The exhaust note rips out the back of the car, while all the huffing and puffing associated with a giant turbo blasts from under the hood. Downshifts are announced with burble and braps from the 3.5-inch exhaust. I am a little disappointed it doesn’t shoot flames. It is probably the loudest Volvo you have ever heard, but it still seems completely livable from inside the car.

That might be most surprising thing about the Polestar S60. By all accounts it should be too wild for the streets. The suspension should be too stiff; the road noise from the bushings and mono-balls should make your ears bleed. The big turbo should make the engine near undrivable, but none of these things are true. Everything works like a production car.

It seems like there might be a grander agenda behind this car. Polestar is still playing its cards close to its vest. While one- or even ten-off halo cars are great, I have to wonder if Volvo and Polestar would be better served producing something more along the lines of a BMW M3 or an Audi RS4. The amount of equipment on this S60 also makes me wonder why Polestar only offers software flashes through the dealer network. We can hope this is the beginning of a more performance-oriented future for Volvo. Even if it needs to be detuned for mass production, a version of this car would put Volvo back on driving enthusiasts’ radar.

Polestar refers to this car as a one-off for a single customer. It admitted to having enough parts to build 10 of them, and customers with the cash to buy them have already been found. While it seems hard to believe that Polestar can move 10 cars at triple-digit prices so easily, I wonder how many it would need to build to bring the price under $100,000. Could it sell enough to justify building them in regular production numbers? Polestar says it will bring this car, or one of the 10, to the U.S. for testing. I look forward to lining this thing up against other cars in the category. I think this crazy Swede has everything it takes to stand up against anything out there with four doors.

Safety (IIHS)

2012 Volvo S60 News and Reviews

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